1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a thermal video-image physiological information detection system and method thereof for estimating pulse rates. Particularly, the present invention relates to a digital set top box (STB) having a multiple identification system for transmitting physiological information applied to heterogeneous networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
US Patent Application Publication No. 20150250391, entitled “Cardiac Pulse Rate Estimation from Source Video Data,” discloses a system and method for estimating a cardiac pulse rate from a video of a subject being monitored for cardiac function. In one embodiment, batches of overlapping image frames are continuously received and processed by isolating regions of exposed skin. Pixels of the isolated regions are processed to obtain a time-series signal per region, and a physiological signal is extracted from each region's time-series signals. The physiological signal is processed to obtain a cardiac pulse rate for each region. The cardiac pulse rate for each region is compared to a last good cardiac pulse rate from a previous batch to obtain a difference. If the difference exceeds a threshold, the cardiac pulse rate is discarded. Otherwise, it is retained. Once all the regions have been processed, the retained cardiac pulse rate with a minimum difference becomes the good cardiac pulse rate for comparison on a next iteration.
Another U.S. Pat. No. 9,036,877, entitled “Continuous Cardiac Pulse Rate Estimation from Multi-channel Source Video Data with Mid-point Stitching,” discloses a system and method for extracting PPG signals on a continuous basis from signals generated from video images captured of a subject being monitored for cardiac function in a non-contact remote sensing environment. In one embodiment, a time-series signal is received. The time-series signal is generated from video images captured of a region of exposed skin where a PPG signal of a subject of interest can be registered. The time-series signal is then divided into batches for processing, with successive batches having at least a 95% overlap with a previous batch. Each of the batches of time-series signals is processed to obtain a PPG signal from each batch. A mid-point of each of these PPG-signals is stitched together to obtain a continuous PPG signal for the subject. The continuous PPG signal for the subject can then viewed on a display device.
Another U.S. Pat. No. 8,855,384, entitled “Continuous Cardiac Pulse Rate Estimation from Multi-channel Source Video Data,” discloses a computationally efficient system and method for estimating a subject's cardiac pulse rate from multi-channel source video data. In one embodiment, a time-series signal is continuously processed by repeatedly: (1) conditioning the estimated source signal obtained on a previous iteration to produce a next reference signal; and (2) using this reference signal to perform a constrained source separation on this next segment to obtain an estimated source signal. A frequency at which this next estimated source signal converged is the subject's estimated cardiac pulse rate for this signal segment. The reference signal is repeatedly updated. Upon convergence, the sliding window is shifted to define a next segment of the time-series signal. The method repeats for each time-series signal segment on a continuous basis or until a termination criteria is met. In such a manner, the subject's cardiac pulse rate is estimated from video data on a continuous basis.
However, there is a need of improving the conventional video-image physiological information detection method for estimating pulse rates. The above-mentioned patent and patent application publications are incorporated herein by reference for purposes including, but not limited to, indicating the background of the present invention and illustrating the situation of the art.
As is described in greater detail below, the present invention provides a thermal video-image physiological information detection system and method thereof for estimating pulse rates. In a detecting operation, a series of video images of head portions are captured and processed to obtain variations of temperature data and to further convert into pulse rate data in such a way as to improve the estimated pulse rates of the conventional physiological information detection method.